‘Victorian Psycho’ Review: Can a Governess This Unhinged Carry an Entire Mansion?

Few horror premises announce themselves as loudly as ‘Victorian Psycho’, which drops a murderous governess into a remote country house and dares you to look away. Zachary Wigon, who previously directed ‘Sanctuary’, helms the film, and Virginia Feito adapts her own novel for the screen. It premiered at Cannes and reaches US theaters on November 13.

Maika Monroe plays Winifred Notty, who arrives at Ensor House, a gothic manor on the Yorkshire Moors, to teach the two children of the Pounds family. Before she has even unpacked, her voiceover assures us she is the sanest person she has ever met, which is the first of many fibs. Jason Isaacs and Ruth Wilson play the parents, so wrapped up in their own comforts that nobody in the house notices the staff going missing.

My first reaction is that Monroe is the reason to buy a ticket. She plays Winifred as someone performing politeness, competence and sanity all at once, and watching those performances crack is funnier than any of the gore. The scene where she kills a deer with a rock and calls it a kindness sets the tone better than any speech could.

Wigon’s direction is polished and confident, and the film has a sharp eye for how class and gender keep a household blind to what is standing right in front of it. Wilson is terrific as the glacial Mrs. Pounds, a perfect counterweight to Monroe’s unraveling. Thomasin McKenzie adds gentle warmth as the nurse, Miss Lamb, while Jacobi Jupe and Evie Templeton play the children with a spooky self-possession.

Where the film stumbles is its appetite. For a story so eager to shock, across 102 minutes and seven chapters it too often cuts away just as the carnage should arrive, and the kills rarely build any real dread beforehand. The finale tries something inventive by unfolding from two clashing points of view, yet it plays more like a clever stunt than a true release.

I also wanted more of what makes Winifred tick. Some backstory arrives and adds welcome texture, but the feminist streak and the jabs at the wealthy are tossed off a little too quickly, so the satire feels like seasoning rather than the main course. Still, the closing coda that lets our favorite ghoul walk away with something close to a happy ending made me grin.

‘Victorian Psycho’ is a bloody, bonnet wearing good time carried by a star at full tilt, even if it is too polite about its own violence. I enjoyed it more than I expected to, and the ideas I wanted it to chase do not cancel out how much fun Monroe is having. I give it 7 out of 10.

Did Winifred Notty’s rampage through Ensor House win you over the way it did me, so tell me in the comments whether you agree with my verdict on ‘Victorian Psycho’.